Squarespace vs Wix 2019

May 14, 2019

Coke or Pepsi? Queso or Guacamole? Squarespace vs Wix? These are all the things we’re going to be debating today.

If you’re new here, my name is Jess and I create videos every single week for business owners like you! If you’re wondering, I am team both guacamole and queso and if I have to, I’m team Coke, but really I am all the way teen Diet Dr. Pepper. Now that that’s out of the way, we are going to be diving into Squarespace versus Wix. I did a video comparing these two platforms a few years ago. There’s been a lot of updates, so I thought it was time to make a new video and help you guys decide between these platforms.

SquareStudio is popular for third-party plugins: http://bit.ly/2ZiaXAP (use code JESSCREATIVES to save 20% off with my affiliate link).

First in this Squarespace vs Wix debate, let’s dive into the themes and design functionality.

Now both of these platforms are drag and drop. Squarespace, when you set up your account, you’ll basically pick a template. It comes with a lot of dummy layouts, text and photos that you customize to create your site. With Wix, it’s pretty similar, but you have two options that are actually kind of the same. The first, you can actually just choose a template, start designing or you can start by using the Wix ADI. This is basically kind of creating a site for you, though in my opinion when I tested it, it’s pretty similar to just using Squarespace where you pick a template and it gives you a lot of dummy text.

But, they have some limitations with the Wix ADI. Wix, you can drag elements all over the page, whereas Squarespace, it’s kind of like you have to color inside the lines. Now, There is one big design downfall of Wix and that is that it’s not 100% truly responsive. It’s mobile-friendly, but it’s not truly responsive. Responsive design means no matter what the width is of my website, all of the content should be viewable on screen. That is the case with Squarespace, but on Wix, after a certain point, your menu items start to disappear. I don’t know about you, but I want to make sure that people can see all of my links and all of my content on my website.

One other thing I want to point out is if you choose a template on Wix, you cannot change that. If you’re three years into using that template and you want to freshen up the design, you’re going to have to start completely over. Now if you choose Squarespace, you can change templates anytime and the design may shift between templates just because of how templates act. You will not lose the content. You will not lose the text and images.

The next thing I want to talk about is the eCommerce features.

Now with Squarespace, you can sell all three of those things from the shop. But with Wix, you can only sell digital and physical products. You cannot sell services. They do have another kind of app that you can utilize, but it’s not integrated into the actual shop and honestly I don’t think it’s smart to sell services through a shop. I think you should make sure you and the client are a good fit and sign a contract before they pay, all that kind of fun stuff. But, that’s a whole other video. Now, one big downfall of a Squarespace eCommerce, at least right now, this may change in the future, is that they don’t have a point of sale integration.

Meaning, if you’re out at a festival trying to sell products, you don’t actually have the capability to do checkout on an iPad. Now, it’s time to talk about another really important factor that a lot of people care about and that is SEO because I know we all want to have our sites rank in Google. I just want to address, I know a lot of you have probably heard that WordPress is the best for SEO and if you’re on anything else, your site won’t rank and that is simply not true. I used Squarespace for five years and my site ranked on the first page of Google for my keywords in a really saturated market.

Now when it comes to SEO between Squarespace vs Wix, they are pretty similar.

A few years ago, Wix got into some trouble and Google was like, hey, we’re not indexing Wix websites anymore. I think Wix kind of fixed up some things and I think they’re okay now. In the last year or so, Squarespace also made some updates to its platform for more SEO functionality. Now, you can add page titles and page metadata.

Now, I want to touch base real quick on plugins because that is everyone’s favorite part about using WordPress. You have all this endless functionality, but Squarespace and Wix also have that functionality.

Wix has its own kind of app directory or marketplace that you can add all this extra functionality. Squarespace has a lot of blocks just built in with different functionality elements that you can add to your pages. They don’t have a plugin directory or marketplace, but a lot of developers have started creating plugins and different functionality that you can add to your site.

Last but not least, I want to talk about some kind of boring backend things that a lot of people won’t care about until something really bad happens, and that is backing up or moving your site.

Wix does have the capability to back up your site. If it gets hacked or something, you have the backups that you can reinstate. But, they do not have the ability to export your content. If you have been using Wix for three years, you have 300 blog posts, you decide I want to move to Squarespace or whatever platform, there’s no export feature and you’re going to have to move those blog posts over manually. Squarespace, on the other hand, does have an export feature, so you can basically download all of your pages, posts and pictures and import them to other platforms.

Obviously the design won’t really be there, but all of the content will, but they don’t have any backup functionality. If your site is hacked or deleted or something happens, there’s not really the option to reinstate it. I always tell my Squarespace clients to just do that export functionality like once a month because then you can at least import all of that content into WordPress and start building your site there.

With all these details in mind, you might be wondering what I use or recommend, and I am team Squarespace simply because Wix is not fully responsive.

You can’t export content, which I feel like is a huge headache waiting to happen, and there are no major companies or brands that are using Wix like those that are using Squarespace and WordPress. If you have any questions about your website or these platforms, let me know.

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